Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
COVER-UP IN CORTEZ
There's murder. There's intrigue. And if author Tony Hillerman hears about this,
he'll probably be calling. Thankfully, the massive cover-up in Cortez is only a
rug—not that the world's largest Two Grey Hills rug is anything to sneeze at. Most
of the Navajo weavings known as Two Grey Hills are used as wall hangings. A
5-foot-by-7-foot Two Grey Hills would be rare enough, but the one in Cortez at the
Notah Dineh Trading Company is 12 feet by 18 feet. It took more than three years
to weave, and the trader who commissioned Diné artist Rachel Curley to weave the
unusual rug was murdered before it ever got completed.
Two Grey Hills rugs, for those of you who don't frequent Indian trading posts,
are the Cadillac of Navajo rugs. They're bordered rugs that use all-natural gray and
brown wools. Because the weave is fine and very intricate, it's not something just
anybody can throw together. To give you some perspective, a weft count (that's the
number of threads running across and woven into the warp threads) of 50 per inch is
considered a high-quality rug; 80 or more qualifies the rug as a tapestry. Two Grey
Hills rugs have counts of 120 or more.
Willard Leighton, known as Chis Chilly (curly hair) to the Diné or Navajo,
contracted Rachel, who comes from a long line of rugmakers, to weave the one-
of-a-kind rug in 1957. Before she could finish it (remember, it took three years),
Leighton was murdered, so when Rachel finally finished the rug in 1960, Willard's
brother Bob, who wanted the rug but couldn't afford to keep it, took it on a trading
trip. In Montana, he talked a rancher into furnishing his new house with fine Navajo
rugs rather than Persians and sold him the masterpiece. Bob Leighton never forgot
about that rug, though, always hoping he'd see it again. Thirty years later, an art
dealer contacted Leighton about a rare masterpiece rug that he'd found in Santa Bar-
bara. Seems it was too large for the home for which it was purchased. Sure enough,
